Coming—The Talking Newspaper (Nov, 1932)

Coming—The Talking Newspaper

THE day of the talking book, the talking newspaper and the talking magazine is foreshadowed in the recent invention of a French machine which reads from a strip of film-like substance any speech that is recorded on it.
The new process utilizes some of the principles of phonograph recording to inscribe the voice waves on a celluloid tape, wound in movie-reel fashion, as illustrated below. On this tape a furrow whose contours represent the vibrations of sound waves replaces the printed word.
Reproduction of the voice may be performed immediately after recording. The former process is effected by the use of a photo-cell and loud speaker.

My mom gets BooksOnTape from the Library of Congress.
She just received her digital audio book player.
Cassettes have been replaced with flash memory cartridges.
It’s an audio player, not text to speech, but pressing any button
announces it’s function.
“Power on” “Volume up”.

Kosher Ham says: June 17, 201010:30 am

Interestingly enough magnetic media, if replaced by flash, is going back to optical, such as CD and DVD.

Jari says: June 17, 20104:34 pm

The article mentions “contours”, which in my mind sounds like mechanical recording. A kind of phonograph groove in a tape.

StanFlouride says: June 17, 20105:27 pm

This will never catch on.
Why would anyone ever give up reading their morning paper?